News:

Forum Upgrade Status Report - Initiating Final Launch CountdownTo paraphrase Walt Disney, you should now prepare to leave behind the world of OCNet today and enter the OCNet of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.During the final weeks of the old OCNet forum, substantial maintenance work and database archiving will be in progress in order to ensure the content from the current forum moves smoothly to the new forum. Pay attention to Board News for information on any updates that may affect you.

Please join us in welcoming our very talented new Creative Director, Story, who will be working to beautify OCNet. If you have any skills in graphics or web design and would like to join the creative team, please PM Story and Alpha60.

Even though I am banned from CAF ( you would think I would have least gotten one warning !) I am still able to read the threads through a back door (I cant post)

There is a new thread "How would you feel if the Eastern and Western Churches were united" and there is a poll attached to it. All the Catholics who took the poll would "Be happy" except for one or two folks. The funny part is that absolutely no Orthdox voted in the poll. I guess that's what happens when you ban people..Duh

Logged

Your idea has been debunked 1000 times already.. Maybe 1001 will be the charm

Has it occurred to you guys that the Administrators of CAF may be reading this site?Given what has happened already, do you think it may be possible that people may be banned from CAF because of what is written here?

Okay... I am going to duct tape up all the windows, fill my pots and pans with reserve water supplies and sleep with my gun.

Logged

Your idea has been debunked 1000 times already.. Maybe 1001 will be the charm

Okay... I am going to duct tape up all the windows, fill my pots and pans with reserve water supplies and sleep with my gun.

Well, I suppose you could do that if you wished, but I was thinking more along the lines of stealth- you know: "gentle as doves and cunning as snakes". Every occupied country during the Nazi era had an organised, underground.<cough> pm system <cough>Take it from someone who belongs to an underground political resistance group in Australia.

Logged

If you're living a happy life as a Christian, you're doing something wrong.

Well, I suppose you could do that if you wished, but I was thinking more along the lines of stealth- you know: "gentle as doves and cunning as snakes". Every occupied country during the Nazi era had an organised, underground.<cough> pm system <cough>Take it from someone who belongs to an underground political resistance group in Australia.

Care to elaborate? Not about the Nazi's, but what you had in mind. (If it's obvious, and I missed it, please forgive my simple-mindedness!)

God Bless,Jeff

Logged

"Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it, and right is right even if nobody is doing it." Augustine of Hippo

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

Care to elaborate? Not about the Nazi's, but what you had in mind. (If it's obvious, and I missed it, please forgive my simple-mindedness!)

God Bless,Jeff

No problem.At the moment, there are about 30 of you here. Those of you who know each other should organize yourselves into a "contact chain". Each person in the chain is responsible for contacting 5 other people in the chain. One person (the "Anchor") acts as the initiator of the chain. That way, if there is a message you need to pass on to the others which you do not want CAF to see, the process is:

1) You send the message via the OCnet private messaging stsystem to the Anchor,

2) The Anchor forwards it to their 5 contacts (6 people now know the message)

3) Each of those 5 contacts forward it to their 5 contacts (31 people now know the message) and so on.......

Logged

If you're living a happy life as a Christian, you're doing something wrong.

It's a lamentable state of affairs when extreme measures are taken to purge vigorous dialogue, moderators are "retired" under mysterious circumstances and an entire forum replete with great bits of information is whisked away to cyber-purgatory, it seems, for more 'purification'.

Your series of contributions on the attitude of the early Church Fathers on the purpose of marriage were of enormous worth. I hope you have it tucked away safely.

I have discovered that if you feed the right words into Google.com it will bring up its own archived messages from CAF.

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

Fr Ambrose

Bless Father,

How wonderful to see you here!

I'm looking forward to a post count surpassing your feat at CAF !

What a great waste and shame that all those have been deposited in their Secret Archives.

God bless you,Jeff

Logged

"Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it, and right is right even if nobody is doing it." Augustine of Hippo

Has it occurred to you guys that the Administrators of CAF may be reading this site?Given what has happened already, do you think it may be possible that people may be banned from CAF because of what is written here?

If they did that, it would be a bit difficult for them to rationalize the banning as a supposed violation of the CAF forum rules.

No problem.At the moment, there are about 30 of you here. Those of you who know each other should organize yourselves into a "contact chain". Each person in the chain is responsible for contacting 5 other people in the chain. One person (the "Anchor") acts as the initiator of the chain. That way, if there is a message you need to pass on to the others which you do not want CAF to see, the process is:

1) You send the message via the OCnet private messaging stsystem to the Anchor,

2) The Anchor forwards it to their 5 contacts (6 people now know the message)

3) Each of those 5 contacts forward it to their 5 contacts (31 people now know the message) and so on.......

And make sure to only send using Blind Carbon Copy so fellow members of your cell cannot be identified in event of capture by the Vatican Secret Police. (Should we throw in RSA cryptography and encrypted proxies such as the tor network as well?)

Your system works well if resisting a tyrannical and intrusive government like the Thrid Reich or, apparently, the Howard administration.

But it might be easier for them if simply complied a list of everyone's user name and sent any message the wanted to send to everyone by putting their names on the 'to' line (assuming that the upper limit on recipients of a pm is high enough, does anyone know what this is?). Provided there's an opt-out option (or even opt-in) for those concerned, I wouldn't imagine that this would cause a problem for anyone.

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

Fr Ambrose

Fr. Ambrose,

Great to have the opportunity to again read and learn from your posts.

Father Ambrose; it is so wonderful to "see" you again. I look forward to reading more of your posts. You have such a wonderful sense of humor and a great wealth of information and wise words. You, and many others that have regrouped here have been used greatly to help my family get on the path to becoming Orthodox.

just right off the top of my head... the vast knowledge, valuable information, generosity in answering questions and Christian witness of posters like Fr, Ambrose, Hesychios, Isa Almisry and literally every other Orthodox poster on CAF led me to my decision to enter the Holy Orthodox Church. I will attest to the fact that no proselytization was involved or even necessary. So I thank God that I happened on that sub-forum and the great people who posted there, or I may never have come to know the truth of the Orthodox Church. As it is, I'm banned for life now, and didn't even get the courtesy of one warning. I want to thank all you guys too, may God bless you all. I'm thrilled to see Fr. Ambrose posting here(as is everyone else I'm sure)! God grant him many years, and thank you Father!

All you need to do to find out is to round up a few of these converts and start some of the threads and see what happens...

Now of course, THAT course of action would IMPLY that you were sincere in your asking with wonder...

My suspection, however, is that your wonder was but a pot shot from a spider hole...

Please prove me wrong and start a thread with those converts here!

Arsenios

Oh give me a break. The moderators would be up in arms if i did this.

Logged

"For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not." - St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, 14.

This board isn't perfect, sure I've had my complaints about censorship and all, but the debates I have had are almost moot in comparison to the stunt your fellow churchmen pulled. I'd personally love it if you got your posse together and I'm sure that if you stayed to the appropriate forums we would all enjoy the open debate and free flow of information. You know how much I like taking cheap shots at you all

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

Fr Ambrose

Fr. Ambrose Bless!

My joy is now full...

You are here...

I was talking last night with my friend in Phoenix, AZ, Reader Stephen-Paul [Robinson], and I asked him if he had ever heard of an Hieromonk in NZ named Fr. Ambrose, and the answer was "Yup - He's the one who just got kicked out of a Catholic forum in a major meltdown, right?" So I confessed my part in causing that event, but the bottom line is, you are becoming famous late in your years, and I fear I am greatly to blame...

Please forgive me for petting that Roman Tom-Cat tail to head, instead of vice-versa, and being instrumental in dragging your name into the lime-light of the hall of fame of Orthodoxy... Remember Myrrh? And your showing me that long thread in which she posted when I first came on CAF? I came to like her a lot by reading that thread, and the work she had done, and was outraged that she had been banned because she was good at refutations... And part of my motive for being there was to stand in and stand up for her memory and the work she had begun... I hope you are still in touch with her, and have kept her abreast of these events... In my book, this event is a tribute to what she began...

And I am sorry that you have lost your place of "work", and the good work you were doing there...

Did you know Fr. Averky? ROCOR hieromonk who posted for a long time on monachos, and died? He also, like you, had medical issues that did not allow him to do much else, other than pray, and his prayers carried many of us... As do all our prayers for one another, and yours for us...

I am glad you are here, Father... We made a good run with you... And some of those Eastern Christians are here too, even though the ones remaining are suffocating under the weight of the Roman Catholic presence... I hear Ghosty, bless the radiant integrity of his soul, is about to pull out... It is just too shameful...

We did something important there, I feel, yet I hope we as well did something good... I pray that the shutting down of that board and the repressive actions of the RC Admins there was God's desire for us to help facilitate... If not, it will be a long afterlife!

So welcome back to your motley crew!

Arsenios

Logged

Reader Arsenios

Watch what you do...You may be the only Bible...That some will ever read...

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

And make sure to only send using Blind Carbon Copy so fellow members of your cell cannot be identified in event of capture by the Vatican Secret Police. (Should we throw in RSA cryptography and encrypted proxies such as the tor network as well?)

Your system works well if resisting a tyrannical and intrusive government like the Thrid Reich or, apparently, the Howard administration.

But it might be easier for them if simply complied a list of everyone's user name and sent any message the wanted to send to everyone by putting their names on the 'to' line (assuming that the upper limit on recipients of a pm is high enough, does anyone know what this is?). Provided there's an opt-out option (or even opt-in) for those concerned, I wouldn't imagine that this would cause a problem for anyone.

While I really appreciate everyone posting here and reuniting, it was mentioned before and I need to mention again that different threads should be opened up for questions like these, only so we can respond without having to dig through posts. We have a technical forum here which is really good for questions as such.

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

The closure of CAF's Eastern Christianity Forum was quite devastating for me and for all of us, I think, and while I am still a member there I have not had the heart to post anything. So I took the new situation as God's indication that I should post less and get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine in New Zealand and the people on the block.

I understand the CAF's Admin's decision to close the old Forum. Significant numbers of conversions to Orthodoxy were occuring, none of it accomplished by proselytization or underhand ways but simply as a serendipity by-product of the public discussions.

My heart goes out now to the few Eastern Catholics who are left there. Along the lines of what Neil has said already, we can all see that they are taking a hammering from their Roman Catholic brethren and from their semi-latinised Eastern brethren and one cannot help but feel sorry for them. There is not much understanding or sympathy for their position.

Tribute should be paid to Joe Monahan who did a sterling job of moderating our rambunctious section of CAF with great fairness and charity to both Catholics and Orthodox.

Anyway, it is nice to be here on OC.net and I can see that people are settling in and enjoying being able to re-establish friendships and connections. Many thanks to the Mods here who are making the CAF people so welcome.

Fr Ambrose

Welcome back to the head of the class, Father...

My joy is now full...

Long post just disappeared - probably best destination for it...

You are already becoming famous in Orthodoxy with the CAF debacle...

Steve [Stephen-Paul] Robinson in Phoenix [Our Life in Christ Radio] knew about it last night when I talked with him on the phone... The waves are being felt and heard widely...

Sure glad to see you here...

Arsenios

Edited to add:

Oh Fiddles! I see the long post did not disappear, but was posted last page... So you get a double dose of S.P., fame and appreciation...

A.

« Last Edit: November 16, 2007, 01:20:02 AM by maqhth »

Logged

Reader Arsenios

Watch what you do...You may be the only Bible...That some will ever read...

This e-mail fails the sniff test - It stinks to high heaven... The "RC Priest about to convert to Orthodoxy" smell like bait, so as to gather without effort the material requested, and place it in the hands of who knows what kind of witch-hunt... The mention of a con-man is itself utterly out of place, and the obsequiousness of the whole thing is dauntingly mal-aeromatic...

I do not trust it for a New York second!

It is WAY too underhanded and sleazy in its manner of presenting itself...

And of course, I could be wrong!

Arsenios

Logged

"Not only is it unnecessary to adopt the customs of the Latin Rite to manifest one's Catholicism, it is an offense against the unity of the Church."

I'm hoping Neil (Irish Melkite) might remember another forum Fr Ambrose spent some time at. I remember Fr Ambrose mentioning another forum but can't for the life of me remember which one.

Hi John,

Good to see you, my friend. Same memory issue as you, but my excuse is old age - you don't have that one.

Speaking of "old age", I have heard from the venerable old* hieromonk via e-mail. (I haven't been here in a couple days and haven't read beyond your above-quoted post yet, so folks may already be aware of this, for all I know). He's having a bout of computer problems and may be off-line for a few days, but I think he can be enticed to show up here on his return.

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

Bless, Father,

Heck, if that was the access issue, you should have said - I remembered that (but, I am younger than you )

Everyone else,

My earlier comment regarding Father having computer problems still stands.

Regarding the convert threads at CAF, as best I recollect Joe posted something to the effect that appropriate responses to posted reports of persons leaving either the Catholic or Orthodox Church for the other were prayerful wishes for the individual's spiritual journey/discernment/decision. What was forbidden were triumphalism on the one hand or disparagement of the decision on the other. And, I believe he applied that fairly equally on both sides; not sure how else it could have been handled. Given the nature of the venue, it was as neutral a stance as could be asked without banning such announcements.

It seems to me (and Father, Mike, or Joe - who all pretty much trace back to the beginning of CAF with me - might agree or remember differently) that there had been a few such threads over the last 3 years, but most were fairly low key. I believe that one thread, a couple of months ago, sort of broke the mold and produced a fierce flurry of "over-the-top" posts from both sides of the fence. That was what precipitated moderator intervention on the matter - not the topic itself; at least, that was my impression of it.

Many years,

Neil

« Last Edit: November 16, 2007, 03:58:32 AM by Irish Melkite »

Logged

"Not only is it unnecessary to adopt the customs of the Latin Rite to manifest one's Catholicism, it is an offense against the unity of the Church."

If they did that, it would be a bit difficult for them to rationalize the banning as a supposed violation of the CAF forum rules.

Your point?

A reason is one thing.

An excuse is another.

Logged

Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

I have heard so much about this father Ambrose I am literally excited to hear about him. What is his background? I can't wait to see some more posts of his.

Buckle your seat belt.

Great to see you here Father.

Logged

Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

Do you know that Sofrino (the patriarchal factory for Church goods in Moscow) now manufactures a very nice silver baptismal cross which has the form of an Irish High Cross but the rest, the corpus and the inscriptions, are in Slavonic. Seems they have created it for the many Russian-Irish babies being born and baptized in Ireland where the influx of Russians, mainly young IT people, has pushed Orthodoxy into 4th place for the various Christian Churches according to Government statistics. Still minimal though - maybe 20,000.

I *finally* discovered my Sign-In name for OC.net -Irish Hermit- and so here I am.

Bless Father.And here I was being careful not to reveal your secret identity on this forum , though I must confess I had informed one of the mods here many months ago.

Rob, OzGeorge, etc. please forgive the reluctance to venture out into other parts of the forum. Over on CAF we were basically only reading and responding to threads in that one subforum called Eastern Christianity. It had a quality which will be missed and formed a habit which is not easily broken.

Bless Father.And here I was being careful not to reveal your secret identity on this forum , though I must confess I had informed one of the mods here many months ago.

Rob, OzGeorge, etc. please forgive the reluctance to venture out into other parts of the forum. Over on CAF we were basically only reading and responding to threads in that one subforum called Eastern Christianity. It had a quality which will be missed and formed a habit which is not easily broken.